


Mercury Raining

by SarIIon



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: (I probably put waaaay too much thought into this), Angst, Bad Ethics, Character Death, Complete, Complex relationships, Despair, Implied Ideas, Izuru's bullshit luck, M/M, Mild Blood/Gore, Murder, This ain't happy, curse words, implied dark themes, the steering committee sucks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-14
Updated: 2019-07-14
Packaged: 2020-06-28 05:37:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,162
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19805845
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SarIIon/pseuds/SarIIon
Summary: “Taking into account the massacre of Hope’s Peak’s student council:This is a euthanization order for Subject 5-010442, Izuru Kamakura.”Izuru considers a homophone and a homograph.Homophone: Two words which share a pronunciation but have different meaningsHomograph: Two words which share a spelling but have different meanings





	Mercury Raining

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starrylitme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrylitme/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Trigger Happenstance Havoc](https://archiveofourown.org/works/11962776) by [starrylitme](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starrylitme/pseuds/starrylitme). 



> TW: If you’re sensitive to sudden death, murder, gore, grief, bad ethics, firearms, implied dark themes, or objectification, I don’t recommend reading this.

Sandals slapped against cold cement as Yasuke trudged slowly, but pointedly, down the stairs. The sounds echoing around bare, institutional corridors almost sounded like hollow laughter as he descended level after level.

He wasn’t supposed to be here.

If he was caught there would probably be dire consequences.

Glancing at the small rectangular sign bolted to the grey stairwell wall as he stepped down onto another landing, he exhaled slightly. Only basement level Sub-4.

Usually guards armed to the teeth watched as any authorized visitors scanned their biometrics at every checkpoint on the way down. Smirking to himself, Yasuke let his shoes slap louder against concrete. Knowing how people think, it’s much, much easier to manipulate them—that was something he’d learned a long time ago. One small announcement over hijacked radio waves later, the entire wing was empty.

What time was it? It felt like he’d been walking down the stairs of this hellhole forever…It always did. Instinctively, Yasuke glanced down at his wrist before groaning aloud at the sight of bare skin. Right. His watch. Fuck. That idiot took his watch.

It had been a while ago, during one of their routine checkup sessions. He’d been running through a tiresome set of standard questions when Izuru had suddenly pointed to the small watch in a silent indication.

“What? This? It’s a watch.”

“…I may be only four days, three hours, and 35 seconds old; however, I assure you, right now you are the one who sounds like a child. Obviously I’m aware what a time piece is. I was indicating that I wanted it.”

“Stop being an annoying piece of shit. I’m not allowed to give you things without clearance. Just answer these damn questions, and I’ll get out of your hair.”

Crimson eyes blinked, stubbornly staring into pale blue ones without breaking eye contact.

“No.”

Izuru extended his palm in the space between them, waiting expectantly. “I could take it from you by force.”

“Uhg…” Groaning, Yasuke ran a hand through his hair with exasperation. With all the talents known to man, this little science experiment of theirs was essentially a troublesome child. “You have to answer the rest of the questions if I give it to you okay?”

An almost imperceptible, slight nod.

Unlatching the leather strap, he dropped it into Izuru’s hand making a mental reminder to pick up a new watch from the store when he had the chance.

He never did replace it.

Basement level Sub-6.

In his usual rumpled white dress shirt, open toed sandals, and black trousers, he felt slightly underdressed for what was planned tonight. Like for some reason he should be wearing something more formal.

Shoving the thought away with an annoyed grimace, he yanked his tie down further until it was practically hanging in a state of disarray around his neck. Fingers brushing over the object in his back pocket, he trudged onward.

Basement level Sub-8.

Of course they would keep a high level security threat locked away in an earthen tomb in the lowest levels of the building. The Steering Committee was cautious like that.

Ha, like anything could keep Izuru from escaping if he wanted to. That discovery was made one afternoon a couple weeks before.

Yasuke exhaled at the memory. He’d been pulling some bs out of his ass for yet another fucking research proposal paper when he’d dozed off, an opened volume of manga resting on his face like some sort of tent. When he’d woken up an hour later, he wasn’t alone.

“What are you doing here?”

“I was bored, so I decided to test my confines.” Izuru didn’t look up from where he was sitting slightly slouched against a wall, one leg propped up and the other neatly tucked beneath him. A scattering of perfectly folded paper cranes littered the ground beside him, but his attention was focused on the colorful plastic rubix cube in his hands (where did he even get that?).

“When they find you, do you think they’re going to be happy?”

“They won’t.” It wasn’t a guess. It was a statement. “I still exist in that room. On security camera feeds at least. Looped playback of prerecorded footage.”

“Go back!” He chucked his book in the direction of the monotone voice with a scowl. The novel hit the wall nowhere near its intended target before bouncing off and landing on the ground. _Problematic in every way._

“The sun’s warm.” An unfazed Izuru faintly gestured to the window which framed a cheery picture of blue skies and fluffy white clouds. “It’s the first time I’ve felt it.”

“…Trouble. You’re such trouble.” Sighing, Yasuke scooted forward on his rolling chair to close the distance between them and give Izuru a small pat on the head. “Fine, you can sit there for a while. If they come for you though, I’m not gonna save you.”

Basement level Sub-10.

Their first meeting had been so long ago…yet not long ago at all.

“I’m Yasuke Matsuda. I’ll be performing your neurological evaluations since your brain is a superb patchwork disaster which could dissolve into mush at any time.”

“Yasuke…which characters?”

Groaning, Yasuke obliged, writing out the characters of his name on the back of a worksheet and holding it up for examination.

“‘Night’ and ‘Rescue’” Blinking slowly, Izuru watched him through a curtain of dark hair. “You already know what I’m called.”

A rescue in the night. How ironic huh? That wasn’t at all what was happening.

_Out of all the nights to go out. Why that one?_

_Why were you there? In that classroom? It doesn’t matter._

_I couldn’t stop the verdict. They’re coming._

_Could you escape? Yes. Would you? …_

This was one of the few times he didn’t enjoy the insights his talent gifted him.

_They’re coming for you tomorrow._

_So I’m coming tonight._

Basement level Sub-10. Corridor 9-A. Containment room 1.

He took a deep breath, scanned his biometrics card, and opened the door.

~.o.~

“Mercury is a homograph.” Izuru was sitting on the edge of his cot like always. One leg propped up, one arm draped casually across it. Crimson eyes seemed to glow in the darkness, and Yasuke didn’t bother turning on the light—the single metal light-fixture hanging by a chain from the ceiling didn’t usually provide much anyway. “Mercury is a chemical element with the symbol Hg and atomic number 80.”

He was awake. Of course he was. Things would’ve been so much easier if he’d been asleep.

Biting down hard on the inside of his lip, Yasuke closed the door behind him.

“Mercury and most of its compounds are extremely toxic and must be handled with care,” The words were almost more monotone than usual. As if innocently suggesting the memorized textbook lines Izuru was reciting didn’t hold some underlying message. “In cases of spills involving mercury, specific cleaning procedures are used to avoid exposure and contain the spill.”

Yasuke’s left eye twitched almost imperceptibly.

_Mercury escaping its container is a public health hazard. Is that what you want me to say?_

He remained silent.

“And the other… Mercury is the smallest and innermost planet in the Solar System. Its orbital period around the Sun of 87.97 days is the shortest of all the planets in this spatial circuit.” Izuru stood up smoothly, shifting raven hair cascading down his back in an inky waterfall. “It’s the closest planet to the sun.”

_Ba-dum._

It doesn’t rain on Mercury…

_Ba-dum._

I’m sorry.

In one smooth motion, Yasuke pulled the revolver out of his back pocket, closed one eye, and pressed down on the trigger.

The bullet hit Izuru in the chest point blank.

Those widening ruby eyes briefly flashed with pain. Silken locks of black hair fluttered soundlessly through the air as his body fell forward, meeting the cold ground with a dull thud. Then nothing. No movement, no sound, nothing.

It was all over in the blink of an eye.

Yasuke’s arm dropped to his side, the gun tumbling out of his hand and skittering across hard cement before coming to rest a few feet away. _That theory…correct._ He bit his lip hard enough to break skin, and a metallic taste filled his mouth, dribbling out of the corner of tightly pressed lips in a crimson trail. He hated being right.

A researcher and his subject.

A jailor and his captor.

A tired neurologist and his trouble. His bothersome trouble of a ward.

There was nothing between them except for maybe a little Stockholm syndrome.

Yasuke gnawed harder on the inside of his cheek, eyes not lifting from the motionless body on the ground. _Nothing…_ Something deep inside of him seemed to break in that instant with an audible *crack.*

Something else also broke.

~.o.~

_(Three weeks ago)_

“Izuru…” Frowning slightly, Yasuke crossed the room in a few long strides, folding his arms as he stood in front of the cot. “Has that brain of yours finally dissolved into mush?”

No response from dull eyes as they stared into empty space.

“Dissociating again…? Tsk…What am I going to do with you?” Biting his lip, he tried raising his voice. “Izuru! Honestly, this is the third time this week. You know you have to be _present_ for me to perform a mental evaluation.”

Those lips were parted slightly, relaxed from their usual neutral position, but they didn’t move. Not a sound came out. Not even a whisper.

Picking up a folded blanket from the foot of the cot, Yasuke unfurled it with a heavy exhale. Touching instability was dangerous…considering this one in particular had super human reflexes, even more so. Getting an arm snapped in half might get him out of work for a few days, but it sure wouldn’t be pleasant.

Shit…He wasn’t a fucking therapist.

Trouble. In every which way.

The blanket fluttered lightly in the air before floating down to cover Izuru’s shoulders. Yasuke stepped back, and not a second too soon, for in the blink of an eye it was slamming into a wall halfway across the room. A blanket. Slamming. _Yeah that was a lot of force…_

“Yasuke.” Slumped shoulders straightened as Izuru repositioned himself into his usual sitting pose. “I take it you’re here for the usual evaluation? My mental status is fine today.”

“I just did some calculations and I've been able to determine that you're full of shit.”

“That seems subjective.”

“Does it?” His eyes flitted over Izuru’s face taking in the slight hazy sheen which still clouded those irises. Pale skin almost seemed whiter than usual, starkly contrasting against trailing curtains of inky hair.

Heavy brows furrowed in annoyance. If those old men were going to clobber together some kind of ungodly talent genius, it was their responsibility to keep it mentally stimulated. Did they really think a few monotonous tests or projects a day was enough? Useless bastards…always making his job harder…

“Yo Izuru, how about I take you somewhere outside of the facility for a change?”

“…‘What are you doing here?’ ‘When they find you, do you think they’re going to be happy?’ ‘Go back!’”

Wincing slightly at the perfect imitation of both his words and voice, Yasuke gave a pointed frown. “I know what I said. Look. It’s trouble if you’re out wandering by yourself, but if you’re with me, I’ll keep an eye on you. I’ll find you a change of clothes or some shit to disguise yourself with, and getting out wouldn’t be a problem for you right? ……Or just stay here for all I care—”

“I'll go anywhere you want me.” There was no _‘as long it’s more interesting than sitting here.’_ That was implied.

Anywhere was more interesting.

“How does the petting zoo sound?” A certain, difficult, childhood friend of his always loved it there. At Izuru’s small perk of interest, Yasuke yawned in mild amusement. It seemed trouble had a soft spot for cute, fluffy things.

_Un sueno me envolvio_ [1]

*crack*

_(One Day Ago)_

“Subject 5-010442 of the Ultimate Hope Cultivation Plan is to be euthanized.”

The room instantly erupted into furious clamoring.

“Do you know how many tries it took to put together a stable subject?! We even gave this one a name and everything!”

“We’ve spent years and millions in funding to get where we are!”

“And you’re just going to shut down this whole project?!”

“SILENCE. Must I remind you that we are scientists? In beginning an experiment, we are responsible for its outcome. I trust I don’t need to replay the security footage from the classroom massacre? Clearly, he is not as mentally stable as we originally thought, nor as under control. The school is already having an extremely difficult time covering up what happened, and these orders come from the top.”

“It’s a shame…”

“We were finally making progress…”

“It’s okay, it just means this wasn’t the true embodiment of hope. We’ll just have to do better with the next subject.”

“Agreed. Perhaps additional sensitivity to noise and light stimuli will make the next one easier to control.”

“Hmm…Phototaxis is a relatively simple basic reflex to tamper with…I could see it working…”

“It might be simpler to implement a thought inhibitor…but then again…that’d be counter intuitive…”

“I’d recommend permanent body immobilization myself…But then again, I doubt limb amputation would stop that level of cognitive function for long. It’d probably find some way around it soon enough.”

“It’d probably figure out how to engineer prosthetics out of bed posts or something, ahaha!”

“Come on guys, think reasonably! How would we even test half the athletic talents if it didn’t have a functional body?”

“I don’t know…Some kind of subdermal shock chip? But then again, it might just remove it again…”

“Subdermal? Like that would stop it fast enough if it ever got out. More like subcardiac. Then it’d be a failsafe emergency shut off.”

“We already tried that…You remember, with Subject 0-15999—”[2]

Deciding that was enough, Yasuke’s eyes snapped open, disrupting the illusion of napping which he’d been maintaining ever since the start of the meeting. Standing up and shoving his chair back in with an ear-splitting shriek of chair legs against wooden flooring, he left.

Everything felt heavy.

Not that it should’ve…It didn’t even really concern him.

“Hey Yasuke!”

He didn’t bother turning around, merely stopping his stride away.

“Wait! Huff…Huff…Yasuke!”

Pressing his lips together into a thin line, he turned around to greet the scientist running toward him. “What?”

“Do you think you could be there? When we euthan—”

“Fine.”

“R-Really?! You’ll do it? I was expecting some sort of half-assed excuse from you like always.”

“Recently I just don’t give a fuck about a thing.”

“Yasuke. I’m serious—”

“Don’t worry…” Running a hand through his hair tiredly, he turned away. “I’ll be there.”

_I never said when I intended to go, therefore the logical conclusion was I meant tomorrow._

~.o.~

*crack*

Yasuke tilted his chin slowly toward the ceiling, staring up as if searching for the stars amid a concrete jungle, among spires of steel rising up through the earth to converge in that small underground room. Gravity tugged with tender persistence, and, coaxed out of its shyness, a single tear broke free, rolling smoothly down his cheek before falling to meet the floor.

And in that same moment, the final chain link holding the metal bar light to the ceiling snapped, sending the entire structure plummeting down to kiss his exposed neck.

It was all over in an instant.

Dark shadows shifted as a figure slowly stood up, untangling itself from the cement floor’s cold embrace. The being brushed dust off of its suit jacket and pants before opening crimson eyes—eyes which seemed to pierce lurking darkness with ease.

Checking himself over for injuries was a quick process, and in only a few seconds, Izuru’s fingers were dipping into the left breast pocket of his blazer. The room was dark, but backlit enough by flickering illumination from the hallway through the small, bullet proof, triple paned window in the door that he could clearly make out the object in his hand.

The bullet was wedged diagonally through the face of the watch, having lodged itself with precisely enough force to slice through glass and steel before coming to a halt halfway through the side. Glass had broken in a perfect spider web of delicate cracks, but somehow the entire timepiece was still intact—not a single sliver of glass having shot off from the force of impact.

Under normal circumstances it never would’ve stopped a bullet from such close range.

What was the definition of ‘normal?’ How subjective…

Not bothering to sidestep the splatters of blood accenting lifeless cement, Izuru knelt down and buckled the watch around the pale, slender wrist of Yasuke’s corpse.

_Warm…_

_His hand was still warm…_

Facial muscles twitching imperceptibly, Izuru stood up, pushing statistics about the cooling rates of bodies to the back of his head.

“You were never Mercury.”

As he stared, the blood trickling out of severed arteries slowly sputtered to a halt before everything started to melt into an amorphous blur. Shapes fuzzed at the edges as his vision contorted. Izuru blinked in surprise, bringing up a hand to touch his face—it came away wet.

The tears spilled out silently, forming rushing trails as they streamed down his face. They fell soundlessly like raindrops, water sprites alighting upon a sea of liquid vermillion. A rivulet collected on the edge of his lip, and almost without thinking, his tongue darted out to meet it. _High levels of sodium… How interesting…_

“…I suppose it was a flawed analogy after all.”

_Can a field of frost flowers bloom from my lungs?_

_Let them refract the summertime sunlight_

_Where the air is calm,_

_And colder than the ice below._

_Mercury raining_

Izuru stood there for a long time, breathing softly through his mouth as the river of tears slowly ran dry. And when it was over, he unbuttoned his blazer, lightly draping it over Yasuke’s shoulders. Rigor mortis hadn’t set in yet, so it was simple enough to reach over and gently guide eyelids closed for the last time. “Wetterhahn…this time you didn’t even remember your gloves.”[3]

_Bromine explosions in my chest, vicious tongues._

_Burn everything inside then reignite_

_Here the final psalm,_

_Rings eerie, spectral, haunting, slow._

_Mercury reigning_

“Yasuke Matsuda…You were…the closest thing to interesting in this place.” Crimson eyes stared up at the ceiling as Izuru stood up slowly. There were no stars shining there.

_A rescue in the night. Close…Their attempts will all prove fruitless._

It wasn’t a surprise. Stars could only be viewed from outside.

Closing his eyes and exhaling softly, Izuru paused for the briefest moment before pushing open the thick metal door with ease and striding out into the empty, echoing corridor.

Mercury runs free.

**Author's Note:**

> -1Roughly translates to ‘A dream enveloped me.’[return to text]  
> -2Izuru’s subject number is the sum of the atomic masses of hydrogen+helium (the main two elements of the sun), and the failed subject’s number is the atomic mass of oxygen preceded by a 0 (Zero O2…get it? Ahaha...)[return to text]  
> -3A reference to [Karen Wetterhahn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn)[return to text]  
> -  
> Take a moment to wallow in despair, bc the rest of these author’s notes are going to break that mood.  
> -(The poem’s first stanza was a massive joke about how tears are salty like frost flowers which contain 3x the salt of any other type of frost) (I'm so sorry for my disastrous sense of humor :')  
> -It doesn’t rain on the planet Mercury! Not water, not acid, nothing! But it does rain mercury gas on earth sometimes! Here’s [the article](https://earthdata.nasa.gov/learn/sensing-our-planet/mercury-raining) about Mercury Rain which inspired the whole analogy! It’s super fucking cool, well written, and defo worth a read!  
> -Did you catch the references?: [‘Mercury’ by Sleeping at Last](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7XHTn1CJ5s) | [‘Mercury’ by GHOSTEMANE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2t0FU1XeDE) (explicit lyrics + volume warning) | [‘Barcelona’ by Freddie Mercury](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zzrsSKi55_0) : ((All of these are songs I *legit* LOVE, so like, also just an excuse to recommend them to you.))


End file.
